Link It and They Will Come

As I've mentioned before, I'm doing some SEO/SEM research for my company. Specifically for their national mortgage lending site.

In my reading I've came across Search Engine Land. They provide some very nice articles and have a ton of links to other SEO/SEM related sites. On Friday I spent some time reading through the blogs linked to see what kind of SEO blogs there are out there. While some were outdated or more geared toward the marketing side, Stuntdubl has a very nice article about Search Engine Optimization Warfare. While that may sound a bit dramatic something that I'm coming to quickly realize is just how competitive the SEO market is. Especially given this comment from the blog:

Organic search results ARE NOT "free traffic". It is paid for in a much different way, with calculated risks and rewards. You WILL NEVER rank for the single term "mortgages". In fact, I give you very poor odds for every ranking for "Ohio mortgages" unless you are quite proficient at understanding competitive analysis and the playbook for SEO, and executing on the important elements of top rankings.

Yeah that is encouraging for someone like us who is trying to rank higher for certain mortgage terms. I'm sure we won't be trying to rank for just the word "mortgages" but even the fact that they used that as an example gives you an indication of how competitive the mortgage industry SEO market is.

Something else that I've read over and over again is how important having good in bound links are. Currently InternetMortgage.com is only showing 12 links according to google. Although it ranks a few more from Yahoo and MSN, google gives in bound links more weight so this concerns me a bit. Getting the quality links is something that I'm not sure how to do for out site either.

Which brings up something I've thought about some. What industries are closely related to mortgages? I have a few ideas but unlike other products, we don't really provide a lasting relationship for our customers. We are more of a one trick pony in that we help people get their mortgage but after it closes we may not speak with that customer for a year or so. Not that we are the only mortgage company with this problem though.

Something else that we are going to be working on is providing content on our site that customers will want to use before, during and after the mortgage process. We (and many other companies I'm sure) are wanting to offer services that are related to the mortgage business so that even before someone fills out and application, they use our site.

Here is where you can help. If you have any ideas about services that a mortgage company might provide that you would want to use let me know. Leave a comment or shoot me an email. If you read an interesting article, link to it here or send me an email. I really am looking for all kinds of input.